


Room to Stay

by muchmorethanaprincess



Category: From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series
Genre: F/M, Soulmate marks, You've Got Mail AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-16
Updated: 2016-11-16
Packaged: 2018-08-30 23:53:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8554606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/muchmorethanaprincess/pseuds/muchmorethanaprincess
Summary: Kate's been talking to a guy on the internet for years about how much they hate having soulmate marks.Kate meets her soulmate unexpectedly in a coffee shop.The two are not entirely unrelated.The soulmate mark au that is also sort of a You've Got Mail au. You're welcome.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to wait and publish this all at once when it was complete, but alas, I am impatient as hell. Sorry. Part two coming soon!
> 
> Also, feel free to give me any input you've got about the texting formatting. This is my first fic with extensive texting/chatting like that so I went with what I thought looked best but I'm open to editing it if there are better ways! 
> 
> And big thanks to Lyndsay and Caitlin for helping me decide on the soulmate marks and just generally being encouraging wonderful people.

_Gecko86: Hey._

_Cakes33: Hi. How’s work?_

_Gecko86: Just another day on the rig. You?_

_Cakes33: I’m fine. The kids didn’t drive me crazy today :)_

Kate imagines he might laugh, just a soft breath, at this. She tries to ignore that she doesn’t actually know what that—his laugh—would sound like.

They’ve been talking like this, online, for a long time now. For years, since long before she picked elementary education as her major, since long before he started working on the oil rigs, since just after her parents died and just after he got out of prison.

They don’t talk about their boundaries, but they have them. They use a messaging service, accessed from phones and computers, but they’ll never exchange numbers—that just seems a wisp too far over the line of personal. They don’t know each other’s real names, just screen-names. Cakes33 and Gecko86. He calls her Cakes sometimes, she thinks of him as Gecko in her head, and neither has corrected the other, so she figures it’s fine. They don’t send pictures of themselves; they’ve never seen more than a stray hand or foot of the other in the few pictures they have shared. No phone calls, definitely no video calls. They’ve never heard each other’s voices. And they never, ever talk about meeting in person.

Kate _thinks_ he’s also in Texas. But they don't mention that either.

_Gecko86: That’s good. Does your mark feel like it’s burning through your skin lately?_

_Cakes33: …no. I hadn’t thought about it in a while actually. Kind of forgot, as much as you can forget it, anyway._

_Gecko86: Huh. Lucky you._

_Cakes33: Yeah. What do you think is going on with yours?_

_Geck86: No idea, but I wish I could just carve the damn thing off._

_Cakes33: That’s a terrible idea on so many levels, not the least because it’s on your wrist._

_Gecko86: I didn’t say I was gonna do it, princess._

_Cakes33: I’m flipping you off rn_

_Gecko86: I’m honored :)_

She rolls her eyes.

_Cakes33: In all seriousness, maybe there’s something going on with your soulmate._

_Gecko86: Doubt it._

_Cakes33: You know saying that doesn’t actually make it less likely, right?_

_Gecko86: How likely is it, then?_

Her brow furrows as she tries to recall. 

_Cakes33: 50/50 I think? It’s been a while since I did any research, but I think it was fuzzy and correlation was unclear?_

_Gecko86: Very helpful, you are_

_Cakes33: Don’t be rude. Maybe it’s not because of your soulmate. Maybe something’s going on with you._

_Gecko86: What are you talking about?_

_Cakes33: I don’t know, feel any bouts of longing lately? Achy pining for someone you’ve never met?_

_Gecko86: …_

_I hate you_

_Cakes33: :)_

_Geck86: No, I haven’t been feeling any of that._

_Cakes33: I’m sure it’s fine. You’ll be fine. Maybe you’ll meet her soon._

_Gecko86: God I hope not._

_Cakes33: Ever the cynic._

_Gecko86: You say that as if you’re a fount of optimism about your own soulmate._

_Cakes33: Hey! I_ dabble _in cynicism. You’ve got a goddamn PhD in it._

_Gecko86: Well, I’m pleased to hear I’ve got some education to show for myself._

She laughs. 

_Cakes33: I’ve gotta go prep for tomorrow’s lesson, I don’t want to be the embarrassing student teacher who makes a fool of herself in the second week._

_Gecko86: Okay. Talk to you later._

_Cakes33: Of course. Be safe._

_Gecko86: Always am._  

Kate looks down at her left wrist, brushing her fingers over the black marks there. The wrists are a pretty common place for soulmate marks—of the half the population that has marks, about half have them somewhere on their forearms. It’s why she wasn’t surprised when Gecko told her his were on his wrist too. She doesn’t know more than that, though, and he doesn’t either. After all, when you meet someone in a chatroom specifically for people with soulmate marks who wish they didn’t have them—for people who are completely uninterested in finding their soulmates—you don’t exactly detail the thin flames licking over your veins that connect you to your supposed other half. You talk about how much you hate having it, how much you despise the idea of a soulmate, how you wish you could forget about it long enough to stop living your life in anticipation of the day you’ll meet them, but you don’t talk about the mark itself. Not about what it is, or what it could mean. It feels, like so much else, just too personal to tell.

She knows that Gecko has considered covering his with a different tattoo. When she asked him why he hadn’t done it yet, he could never quite answer.

She thinks, beneath all his masterful cynicism, he might have a tiny bloom of optimism holding out hope for something good to come of his mark, instead of the colossal mess she knows he’s expecting. She hopes he gets it.

Kate always keeps her mark covered. She’s not ashamed of it—not ashamed of the flames themselves, or of having a soulmate somewhere out in world, but people are nosy assholes, and she’s _never_ in the mood to deal with the questions. Usually someone wants to know if she’s met her soulmate yet, if she has, what was it like? If she hasn’t, how does she feel about that? She decided a long time ago—long sleeves for her.

Her feelings about the mark have shifted over the years. At first she was a silly teenager, excited and anxious about the prospect of a soulmate. But when she started college, she began finding the horror stories. All the ways a soulmate could go wrong, when the concept was supposed to be the most miraculous thing in the world, made Kate think that the whole idea of the marks must be some terrible joke from the universe. She wasn’t sure where she thought God stood on the matter. If he even cared at all.

And then her parents died, and she found her mother’s journals, and discovering the truth—that her parents, who had had matching black crosses on the backs of their hands for as long as she could remember, were miserable for the majority of their marriage—was too much for her. She joined the chat a few months later, and it was the perfect outlet for her frustration with having a mark of her own on her skin. But after a while, she was tired of the constant bitterness, and the influx of new users just learning to hate their marks, so she left, but she kept talking to Gecko.

They understand each other. Kate chooses not to examine it further than that.

* * *

_Cakes33: You know I broke the law once._

_Gecko86: Oh really? Do tell, princess._

_Cakes33: I was in high school, and I got this stupid idea from a picture I saw to like… vandalize stop signs? It was graffiti._

_Technically._

_Gecko86: Technically?_

_Cakes33: I can’t even remember what kind of paint we used, but it was like, a paintbrush and pallet maneuver._

_Gecko86: Oh my god. What did you even paint?_

_Cakes33: …_

_Stupid inspirational shit like “SMILE” underneath where it said STOP._

_Gecko86: Oh my god. This is the funniest shit I’ve ever heard._

_Cakes33: I think we wrote “life is beautiful” on one of those signs that directs you on a curve in the road._

_Gecko86: Shit, I’m gonna wake up the guys. I can’t stop laughing._

_Cakes33: Neither can I tbh_

_Gecko86: Why are you telling me this?_

_Cakes33: You said you were having a bad day earlier, and idk I just thought of it. Thought maybe it’d give you a laugh._

_Gecko86: That it did. Quite the rebellion for a preacher’s daughter._

_Cakes33: lmao_

_Gecko86: Thanks cakes_

_Cakes33: Anytime_  

* * *

It happens in a coffee shop. The barista has just called her name, and when she turns around after grabbing her drink, she slams directly into someone behind her.

His hands immediately reach for her arms to steady her, but her drink has already sloshed down her shirt.

“Jesus, careful.”

Her cheeks flame. “Sorry.”

He drops his hands. “No, it’s okay. Both of our faults.”

She glances up at him. He’s attractive, in a dark, looks like he hasn’t slept in days kind of way. He’s wearing a baseball tee, with three-quarter length sleeves showing off his muscled forearms nicely.

He looks at her soaked shirt, lingering perhaps a beat too long. “Um, I’d offer to help, but I don’t…”

“No! No, it’s okay. I’m going home right now anyway, so it’s fine. I’ll just um,” she holds up her empty cup. “Get another coffee.”

“Good plan.”

He leans over her to grab his own cup, and she realizes she was still standing in the way. She blushes again.

“Sorry,” she mumbles.

A smile flashes across his face, disappearing too quickly. “Don’t worry about it. Sorry about your shirt.”

“My fault.”

“Alright, well. I’ll see you around.”

“Right.” Attraction flickers through her, so she lets herself lean into it. “And you be careful of girls with coffee.”

He laughs. It’s a really nice sound. “Always am.”

And then he lifts his free hand—his left hand—in a wave as he turns to leave, and she sees it—a sunburst of black flames licking over the inside of his wrist. Identical to her own.

She’s still frozen in place a few minutes later when the barista calls her name.

* * *

She doesn’t tell Gecko right away. Her first instinct is to tell him, but she knows this is something that will, for better or worse, separate them. She’s met her soulmate, and he hasn’t. It’s something that’s generally considered a big, defining event in the life of someone with a soul mark, regardless of what happens after.

And, for all that they’ve talked about and been through together, she has no way of predicting how he’ll respond to this.

* * *

_Cakes33: Do you really never want to meet them?_

_Your soulmate?_

_Gecko86: Really._

_Or maybe not. I don’t really want to live the rest of my life knowing I haven’t met them, either._

_Cakes33: Right. It feels like waiting for the other shoe to drop, or something._

_Gecko86: Yeah. And the sense of obligation, and who knows what they’ll expect from me. I don’t want that. But we’ve talked about all this before._

_Cakes33: Yeah we have, sorry. Just wondered if anything had changed for you, I guess._

_Gecko86: Nah. I like my life the way it is. I’d still prefer not to have a mark. Make my own fucking destiny, or whatever._

_Cakes33: Maybe destiny has something better for you than you’d make for yourself_

_Gecko86: Doubt it._

_You really think that?_

_Cakes33: I don’t know. It’d be nice though, wouldn’t it? I mean we’re stuck with them anyway. I’d like to believe something good will come out of it._

_Gecko86: Well, that makes one of us._

_Cakes33: Have you ever even seen any good soulmates in your life?_

_Gecko86: One of my prison buddies, he and his wife. Who knows where they’re at now though. But most of the ones I’ve known are more like…_

_Cakes33: My parents._

_Gecko86: Yeah._

_Cakes33: Maybe it’ll be different for us._

_Gecko86: Maybe._

She knows he’s just placating her, though. He doesn’t believe he deserves anything good, and he certainly knows better than to hope for it.

* * *

Kate tries not to become obsessive about the coffee shop.

She fails.

It’s a good place to grade her students’ work, after all. And when she’s run out of that, she reads, glancing up every time the chime above the door sounds.  

It seems absurd to her that he could have been _right here_ all this time and she never knew. Or maybe he wasn’t right here, and he was in town on that specific day, in her coffee shop, for some random reason and he’ll never be there again.

It kind of scares the shit out of her. Which of course is one of the reasons she hadn’t liked the concept of soulmates in the first place, and why she usually wanted to forget she had one.

How could she see him _once_ and then never again? How could she see him once and then have no idea about anything else? No sense of who he is, or whether he’s waiting for her, or whether that little spark of attraction she felt for him could really grow into the inferno some soulmates claim they feel for each other.

The idea that that might have been her one shot, her _only_ shot, whether she’d wanted it or not, is too huge to think about.

So she just keeps going to the coffee shop instead.

* * *

_Cakes33: I’ve never had a real relationship, you know?_

_I mean, not anyone that I was really in love with, or really dedicated to. I feel like that makes the mark worse for me. I don’t know. Like maybe they really are my one person._

_Gecko86: Wow we’re really diving into this today_

_Cakes33: Ha. Sorry._

_Gecko33: Don’t worry about it. You doing okay?_

_Cakes33: Yeah, I’m fine. Just over-thinking a lot recently._

_Gecko86: I’m not sure I’m much help in this situation._

_I mean, I have been in love. Or that’s what I thought at the time._

_No idea how it would compare to being with my soulmate though. And it’s been a while._

Kate takes a deep breath.

_Cakes33: What do we do if we find them, and it’s as good as everyone says it’s supposed to be?_

_Gecko86: I really don’t know._

* * *

They talk about much more than just soulmates, but Kate can’t help constantly coming back to the subject in her mind. Gecko’s cynicism has never bothered her, but for once, she could use a little hope from someone else.

* * *

_Gecko86: How’s your brother?_

_Cakes33: Good! He called me the other day, actually. Still on tour with his band. We talked for a while. He sounds good._

_How’s yours?_

_Gecko86: Good. He’s good._

This is something they have in common. Both have dead parents, both are devoted to their brothers, who they’ve been to hell and back with. Gecko is the only person in Kate’s life that she thinks understands how she feels about Scott, because she understands how he feels about his own brother.

_Gecko86: He’s keeping out of trouble at least, and that’s about all I can really ask of him. We’re doing Thanksgiving at our Uncle Eddie’s next month._

_Cakes33: You’ll have the day off?_

_Gecko86: Yeah, scheduling worked out in my favor this year._

_Cakes33: That’s great. I’m glad you’ll get to spend it with your family :)_

_Gecko86: You have plans?_

_Cakes33: Uh, no. Not unless my brother makes a surprise trip home, but it’ll be a nice break from work and school regardless._

_Gecko86: Ah yes, your important, exhausting work shaping young minds._

_Cakes33: shut up asshole_

_Gecko86: :)_

* * *

She sees him again in the coffee shop a month after the first time. She freezes, and she thinks maybe she’ll watch him walk out the doors, _again_ , because she can’t make herself move from the chair she’s been planted at while she grades classwork. But then, by some miracle, _he_ walks up to _her_.

It’s a Saturday morning, and it’s crowded in the little coffee shop. He gestures to the chair across the tiny two person table she’s seated at.

“You mind?” he asks.

“Go for it,” she says, not quite mastering the tension in her voice.

She has no plan for this. She tried for the last month to think of what she should say to him, but she still has nothing. So she decides to do something small. Something she never, ever does in public.

She pulls the sleeves of her sweater up, just a bit. Just enough that they bunch below her elbows, and her wrists are exposed.

“Hey,” he says, a smile in his voice. She looks up quickly. “You’re uh, you’re the girl I ran into a while ago, you spilled the coffee on yourself?”

She smiles ruefully. “Yeah, that was me.”

She reaches up to move a strand of hair off the left side of her face the way she always does, without thinking, and the man across from her halts.

“Holy shit.”

She pauses, and realizes what he’s staring at. Quicker than she expected, but this was what she intended, right? She lowers her arm to the table slowly.

“Um,” she mumbles, but he’s turning his own arm, wrist already uncovered by the button down shirt he’s wearing with the sleeves cuffed a few times up his forearms. She stares at his mark. The flames look just like hers, curving and soft and beautifully shaded, but she thinks that they suit him nicely.

“I noticed, the last time. But you were already out the door and so I--”

“You came back looking for me?” he asks. His voice is gruff.

“I don’t know that I’d put it like that,” she says haltingly.

“How would you put it?”

She shrugs stiffly. “I’m just… here a lot? If I was looking for you, there’s a lot more I could have done. Asked the barista if you paid with a card, for example, and gotten your name. I didn’t do that.” She gives him an arch look. He seems to deflate a little bit.

“I don’t,” he starts, then stops. He lets out a breath. “So how is this supposed to work?”

She raises her eyebrows. “I haven’t exactly done this before either.”

“Right.”

“We could start with names?”

He nods. He looks uncomfortable. “I’m Seth.”

“Cool. I’m Kate.”

He nods again and tugs at his sleeve, like he doesn’t know what to do with his hands. Almost like he wants to cover his mark, even though it’s been uncovered both times she’s seen him.

“You don’t cover it usually?” she asks.

He shrugs. “Don’t really need to. You cover yours?”

She nods. “There’s always questions I don’t want to deal with.”

“A lot of people assume it’s a tattoo of my own.”

“Ah.”

They’re quiet for a moment. Kate studies his face while he looks across the table at her wrist. He’s got nice bone structure, pretty eyes, neat stubble. He looks decently built under his button down, and his forearms are certainly a handsome sight. No immediate turn-offs to be found. When he looks up again, he catches her gaze. She blushes, but she shouldn’t be embarrassed. He’s her _soulmate_. She’s pretty sure she’s allowed to stare.

“Look, I don’t know what you expect, and I don’t mean this as anything against you, but I’m not exactly too keen on the whole soulmates thing.”

“Me either,” she responds quickly. “And I don’t--I don’t expect anything, don’t worry.”

“Okay. So we can just--”

But Kate doesn’t get to hear what he might have said, because his phone rings. He looks down at it.

“Sorry, it’s my brother,” he says as he picks it up.

“Okay,” she mumbles. In all that she’s heard about soulmates, no one has ever told her how _awkward_ it would be. She doesn’t know what she wants from this, but she thinks sinking into the ground or bursting into flame on the spot might be preferable to staying at this table.

She tries not to listen to his conversation, but he’s _right there_ , and soon he seems to be bickering with his brother. And then her ears prick up at a familiar name.

“Look, just tell Uncle Eddie he’s being a dick, okay? I’ll talk to him when I’m there.”

Kate freezes, and it only takes her a second to make the connection. Gecko has an Uncle Eddie.

She’s packing up her things when he hangs up a minute later. His brow furrows when he realizes what she’s doing.

“Uh,” he starts, but she interrupts him.

“I have to go.”

“O-kay,” he says haltingly.

She’s out the door before he can think to say anything else.

This time, she leaves him frozen in the coffee shop.

* * *

She doesn’t know what to do when she gets back to her apartment.

All this time, not only was her soulmate so close, but _Gecko_ was too? Or at least, she thinks. There’s definitely more than one Uncle Eddie in the world, but this feels… too weird to be anything else.

“Seth,” she whispers to herself. Her soulmate’s name is Seth. He has thick black hair, a nice smile, a good, rough voice, and matching black flames. And if he really is Gecko, the way she thinks he is, then she already knows a lot more about him than that. Then _he_ already knows a lot more about her than what he saw today.

Maybe he’s not the same person, and she just overreacted and made herself look like a dramatic idiot in front of her soulmate. _And_ she left without saying anything else, so who knows if she’ll even see him again. Maybe he’ll never go back to the coffee shop. She certainly wouldn’t blame him.

But then her phone buzzes, and when she sees the message on the screen it makes her heart stutter.

_Gecko86: I met my soulmate today_

It really was him then. Gecko86, the man she’s been talking to for years, is her soulmate. And he has no idea.

She hardly even considers telling him. 

_Cakes33: Whoa._

_How’d it go?_

_Tell me everything._

_Gecko86: Hardly even lasted five minutes before she ran out._

Kate winces.

_Cakes33: More spooked by the prospect of a soulmate than you are? I’m shocked._

_Gecko86: Yeah, I don’t know how that happened tbh_

_Cakes33: Other than that, what was she like?_

_Gecko86: She’s cute. Honestly that’s about all I know._

Kate’s breath catches. She feels stupid for it, but her soulmate thinks she’s _cute_. She’ll let herself have a moment.

_Cakes33: Well that’s a relief at least_

_Gecko86: haha_

_Cakes33: Are you going to see her again?_

_Gecko86: Don’t know. I mean, she literally ran out of the coffee shop._

_Cakes33: Do you want to see her again?_

_Gecko86: I’m supposed to, aren’t I?_

_Cakes33: Not what I asked. Also not an answer._

She can practically hear his exasperated sigh. 

_Gecko86: I guess I do. I mean not really. But kind of. It feels like_

_Like what if_

_Cakes33: Like what if she really is something._

_Gecko86: Yeah. At the very least I have to figure that out, right?_

_Cakes33: Right. You owe it to yourself._

_How are you gonna find her again?_

_Gecko86: She said she’s at the coffee shop all the time so I guess I’m just gonna? Keep going back?_

Kate smiles to herself.

_Cakes33: Decent plan._

_Gecko86: Ha, right. Thanks._

_Seth_ , she thinks. She feels so comfortable talking to him like this, it’s difficult to process that he’s the same man she was sitting awkwardly with earlier.

_Gecko86: but I'm on the rig for two weeks starting tomorrow so_

_It’s gonna eat me alive in the meantime._

Kate lets out a sigh of relief. That means she’ll get two weeks of not worrying about being at the coffee shop at the right time to run into him.

And two weeks to over-think everything about this.

_Cakes33: Well, keep me updated._

_Gecko86: I will._

* * *

Kate doesn't remember it until a few days later. She and Gecko ( _Seth,_ she thinks to herself, he’s Seth now) have briefly discussed it before, but it was abstract and he was just a person she talked to on the internet. Now he’s her soulmate, and she thinks it matters. 

_Cakes33: Why did you get married even though you had a soulmate?_

_Gecko86: Because we were young and stupid. What made you think of that?_

She can’t say, “because I'm your soulmate and the idea of you marrying someone else before you’d ever even met me to know if you’d want me is driving me crazy.” But that’s pretty much how she feels. 

_Cakes33: Dunno, just curious about your perspective. I don't think I could do something like that, I want to hear what it was like for you. She didn't have a mark, right?_

_Gecko86: Right. That made it easier I think. She knew I had one, obviously, but we just never talked about it. You think I’m bitter now, you should have seen me then. I wanted to ignore it so badly and she went along with that. We acted like it wasn’t there._

_Cakes33: Do you think your mark had something to do with you two splitting up?_

_Gecko86: Yes and no. We just didn’t work together, but we were naive and stubborn enough to try. It was bound to crash sooner rather than later. But if you want to get all mystical soulmate bond on me and shit, then who’s to say the real reason we didn’t work is because I can’t make a relationship last with someone who’s not my soulmate? That maybe I knew something was missing._

_Cakes33: Did you?_

_Feel like something was missing?_

_Gecko86: I didn’t think so at the time, but I don’t know. Maybe I was just lying to myself. I don’t have anything to compare it to yet._

Kate wants to ask if he actually wants things to work with his soulmate, with _her_ , or if he’d rather be proven right about all the bullshit. But she can’t bring herself to hear the answer, so she changes the subject instead. 

* * *

The two weeks she knows he’s on the rig are torture. Seth doesn’t mention his soulmate again, so she follows his lead. They chat about their daily lives, keeping conversation to trivial things. Until the day before he’s off. 

_Gecko86: What if_

A few minutes pass, and he doesn't continue.

_Cakes33: ?_

_Gecko86: I don’t know. Something stupid._

_Cakes33: Tell me. Ask me._

_Gecko86: What if she hates me? What if she_

_She’s not going to want me._

_Seth_ , she thinks, without even processing his name before it jumps to her mind. _Seth_ , she thinks, and it feels like an ache in her chest. 

_Cakes33: You can’t possibly know that. You haven’t even tried yet._

_Gecko86: I shouldn’t care, I_ don’t _care. But just_

_There’s a person who’s supposedly going to love me in a way I can’t imagine yet. And all I can think is that she probably deserves a lot better than me. And she’ll probably know it._

_Cakes33: And if she does, then what? You’ll at least know, and you’ll be done with it, and you can move on. But I don’t think that’s going to happen._

_Gecko86: Yeah well, what do you know?_

_Cakes33: That you’re good. And if she’s really made for you the way everyone says, there’s no way she won’t see that._  

 _She already has_ , Kate thinks. _I already have_. 

_Cakes33: And maybe she has these same fears. Go back to the coffee shop. Try._

_Try, Seth,_ she thinks. _Try._

**Author's Note:**

> The kudos button is Right There and you don't even have to be logged in to hit it!! Also, comments are my fuel so please consider leaving one if you enjoy this so far.


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